Today's teens are bilingual: They speak English and text message

Published: Friday, January 05, 2007

TRACY SIMMONSAVALANCHE-JOURNAL

When William Shakespeare was a boy, he probably wrote notes to his friends with a quill pen and likely said things like "madam," "anon," "yede" or "nis." Words we know, and words that don't even make it into most dictionaries anymore.

But, if he were a teen of this millennium he'd speak a much different language. And he wouldn't use a pen or paper. He'd use blogs, instant messaging or text messages, and he'd probably write like this: "Ill c u 2nite." Or, "This class iz taking 4ever."

Instant Messenger: Real-time chatting is faster than e-mail

IM is more fun, too. PEW reported that four of every 10 Americans use IM. Of those IMers, 36 percent said they use it daily. America Online is the most common instant message service, with 5.7 million users, according to PEW.

Internet Safety

Be as anonymous as possible.

Make your blog for friends or subscribers only.

Avoid in-person meetings.

Only post pictures you're comfortable with family or future employers seeing.

Should you meet a fellow blogger, do so in public, bring a friend and tell an adult about it.

Tell an adult if someone from the Internet is making threats against you or others.

Use a combination of numbers and letters in your passwords, and do not share them.

Young adults, ranging from age 18 to 27, tend to use IM multiple times each day and told PEW it's easier than using e-mail.

Speaking of e-mail, 21 percent of teenagers claim to have four or more e-mail accounts.

So what do IMers talk about online? About 13 percent of teens use it to ask someone out, and about 17 percent use it to break up with someone.

Students seem to be able to separate their Internet shorthand from their class work, though, said Linda Wickersham, an English teacher at Lubbock High School.

"It's not really a problem," she said. "The only time I see it in class is with capitalization."

Wickersham is the mother of a teenager and said her son uses shorthand offline only when someone says something silly. His response might be LOL, which means laughing out loud. But other than that, he limits his IM shorthand to the computer.

With IM being so widespread, Wickersham said she tries to incorporate it into her class lessons by encouraging an online dialogue among her students.

"Kids today ... their conversations get quite lofty," she said. "Text and IM, it keeps their wheels turning."

Language has progressed over the decades, she notes.

"My students have to memorize (passages of) 'The Canterbury Tales' in Old English. That goes to show how language has evolved," she said.

But she's OK with it. She just wants her students to keep writing and communicating, whether it's via Internet, cell phones or appropriate chat rooms.

Why call when you can send a text message?

Almost half of the teenagers in America have a cell phone, and 33 percent of them use text messaging, according to PEW. But they don't just use text to send messages to their pals - 29 percent use it to text their parents. "Im gonna b late," they write, or, "can u pic me up?"

Adults who don't have kids use it, too. Of the millions of cell phone users, 35 percent send texts.

According to cellsigns.com, 10 billion text messages are sent each month, a 250 percent increase from 2004. And that number is expected to continue rising.

This new shorthand lingo is nicknamed Internet English. Some like it; some hate it. But either way, it's not going anywhere anytime soon.